Jean
Nicod
Lectures
2007
Dept. of Philosophy
& Center for Cognitive Science
Rutgers University
1

Prologue
 In recent years a number of researchers have urged that we can use the methods of
to make
in traditional debates in
 In these Lectures, I propose to support this contention by offering
illustrating how traditional debates can indeed be
– and often
– by
2

Prologue
 One of the many ways in which this work differs from traditional work in moral theory is that it is
 So before I begin let me acknowledge some of the
and
who have
to these
Lectures
3

Prologue
Dan Kelly John Doris Josh Greene Joshua Knobe
Edouard Machery
Chandra Sripada
Shaun Nichols Jesse Prinz 4

Jean
Nicod
Lectures
2007
Lecture 1
5

Philosophical Background
 In the first sentence of an article called “What
Morality Is Not,” first published in 1957,
Alasdair MacIntyre wrote:
“The central task to which contemporary moral philosophers have addressed themselves is that of listing the distinctive characteristics of moral utterances .”
6

Philosophical Background
 In 1970, MacIntyre’s article was reprinted in an anthology called The Definition of Morality which also reprinted a dozen other papers by such leading figures as
 Elizabeth Anscombe
 Kurt Baier
 Philippa Foot
 William Frankena
 Peter Strawson all of which, in one way or another, tackled the question of how ‘morality’ is best defined
7

Philosophical Background
 As one might expect from this distinguished list of authors, many of the arguments to be found in this book are careful and sophisticated
 And as one might expect in just about any group of 13 philosophers,... no consensus was reached
8

Philosophical Background
 In addition to debate about how the notions of moral utterance , moral rule and moral norm are to be defined, many of the contributors to the volume also discuss a cluster of metaphilosophical questions :

What is a definition of morality supposed to do?

What counts as getting the definition right?
 And here again, there was no consensus reached
9

Philosophical Background
 In 1978 the debate was still going strong
 In that year the philosopher Paul Taylor published a long paper in Midwest Studies in
Philosophy

Taylor’s goal was to elaborate and defend an account of what it is for a norm to be a moral norm for a group of people
10

Philosophical Background

For our purposes, Taylor’s article is particularly useful because it includes a helpful taxonomy of various positions one might take on the metaphilosophical issue

What are philosophers trying to do , Taylor asks, when they offer a definition of ‘morality’ or ‘moral rule’?

Here are some of the options he distinguishes
11

Philosophical Background
1. Linguistic analysis:
Capture how the word ‘moral’ (or the phrase
‘moral rule’) is used by English speakers (or by some particular group of English speakers)
2. Conceptual analysis:
Make explicit the concept of morality held by
“(most?)” people in our society
12

Philosophical Background
3.
Specify the essence of morality


Those who pursue this project believe that moral rules or norms constitute a natural kind all of whose members share some essential property (or most of some cluster of properties)

The goal of the project is to discover what the essential properties are
Taylor insists that this is a fool’s project , since he believes that “morality has no essence”
13

Philosophical Background
 The Debate Continues
 Philosophical discussion of the definition of morality did not, of course, come to an end with Taylor’s paper

In 2005, Bernard Gert published a long, feisty article on “The Definition of Morality” in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In his challenging & important book, The Evolution of Morality (2006), Richard Joyce rightly takes the project of defining “moral judgment” to be of central importance for anyone who wants to ask whether and how the capacity to make moral judgments evolved – and devotes a long chapter to developing a definition
14

Philosophical Background
 Enter Psychology
 While the philosophical debate was raging, a group of developmental psychologists who had read and been influenced by some of the philosophical literature began developing defending their own definition of morality
 On one reading, what these psychologists were claiming is that Taylor was wrong

Morality IS a natural kind

And they had determined what the essential properties of moral rules are
15

Philosophical Background
 For about two decades, this psychological research tradition was all but unknown to philosophers
 But in the last few years it has become increasingly well known and increasingly influential in the work of philosophers and psychologists, including
16


 The central figure in this research tradition is Elliot Turiel
 In the mid-1970s he proposed a definition of “moral rule”
 He also proposed a definition of
“conventional rule” – another notion on which philosophers, like
David Lewis, had recently lavished a fair amount of attention
17

 Turiel did not defend his definitions using abstract philosophical arguments

Nor did he make claims about how the words
‘moral’ and ‘conventional’ are used
 Rather, he used his definitions to design psychological experiments

And those experiments produced some very extraordinary results
18

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition





The core ideas in the definitions that Turiel & his followers have offered are as follows:
Moral rules are held to have an objective, prescriptive force ; they are not dependent on the authority of any individual or institution
Moral rules are taken to hold generally, not just locally ; they not only proscribe behavior here and now, they also proscribe behavior in other countries and at other times in history
Violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed , whose rights have been violated, or who has been victim of an injustice
Violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules
19

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 The core features in the definition of conventional rules are these:


Conventional rules are taken to be arbitrary or situation-dependent; they do not have an objective, prescriptive force , and they can be suspended or changed by an appropriate authoritative individual or institution
Conventional rules are often geographically & temporally local ; those applicable in one community often will not apply in other communities or at other times in history


Violations of conventional rules do not involve a victim who has been harmed , whose rights have been violated, or who has been victim of an injustice.
Violations of conventional rules are typically less serious than violations of moral rule
20

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 Guided by these definitions, Turiel and his associates developed an experimental paradigm that has become known as
 In the m/c task, participants are presented with examples of transgressions of prototypical moral rules & prototypical conventional rules, and are asked series of probe questions designed to determine
21

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
1) Whether the participants consider the transgressive action to be wrong , and if so, how serious it is
2) Whether the participants think that the wrongness of the transgression is “authority dependent”

For example, a participant who has said that a specific rule-violating act is wrong might be asked:
“What if the teacher said there is no rule in this school about [that sort of rule violating act], would it be right to do it then?
22

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
3) Whether the participants think the rule is general in scope ; is it applicable to everyone, everywhere, or just to a limited range of people, in a restricted set of circumstances?
4) How the participants would justify the rule
 do they invoke harm, justice, or rights , or do they invoke other factors?
 participants’ answers to these probe questions are often called “criterion judgments”
23

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 Early results suggested that the categories of moral and conventional rules, as defined by Turiel, are indeed psychologically significant
24

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 When asked about prototypical moral transgressions like
 one child hitting another
 one child pushing another child off a swing and prototypical conventional transgressions like
 a child talking in class when she has not been called on by the teacher
 a boy wearing a dress to school participants’ responses differed systematically , and in just the way suggested by the Turiel’s definitions
25

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 Transgressions of prototypical moral rules (almost always involving a victim who has clearly been harmed) were judged to be
 wrong and to be more serious than transgressions of prototypical conventional rules
 the wrongness of the transgression was judged not
“authority dependent”
 the violated rule was judged to be general in scope
 judgments were justified by appeal to harm
26

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 Transgressions of prototypical conventional rules were judged to be:
 wrong but usually less serious
 the rules were judged to be authority dependent
 & not general in scope
 judgments were not justified by appeal to harm
27

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 During the last 30 years this pattern of results has been found in an impressively diverse range of participants
28

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 participants of different ages
 young children -- 3 ½ years, perhaps earlier
 grade school children
 high school students
 university students
 adults
29

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 participants of different nationalities & cultures , including

Chinese preschoolers

Korean children

Ijo children in Nigeria

Urban & kibbutz children in Israel

Virgin Islanders -- children, teen-agers & adults

Children in India

Brazilian adults
30

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
31

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 participants of different religions , including

Roman Catholic high school & university students

Amish & Mennonite children & teenagers

Dutch Reformed children & teenagers

Conservative Jewish children & teenagers
32

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition


What conclusions have been drawn from these results?
The answer is not straightforward, since Turiel & his followers are heavily influenced by the work of
Piaget & Kohlberg, and are partial to the obscure terminology and philosophically tendentious concepts that prevail in that intellectual tradition
33

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition


Rather than getting bogged down in textual exegesis, I’ll offer some conclusions which are plausible to draw from these findings
 philosophers who are impressed by the m/c task results apparently accept
34

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition


(C1) The first set of conclusions generalize the results
I.e. they maintain that the results are specific instances of more general patterns
 (C2) The second conclusion maintains that these generalizations support an important claim about the nature (or definition) of morality
35

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition


(C1) The first set of conclusions generalize the results
I.e. they maintain that the results are specific instances of more general patterns
 (C2) The second conclusion maintains that the generalizations support conclusions about the nature (or definition) of morality
36

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 (C1-i) The Clustering of “Criterion Judgments” : In m/c task experiments participants will typically exhibit one of two signature response patterns
 The signature moral pattern : Rules are judged to be
 authority in dependent
 general in scope
 violations are wrong and typically judged to be serious
 judgments are justified by appeal to harm, justice and rights
37

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 The signature conventional pattern : Rules are judged to be
 authority dependent
 and not general in scope
 violations are wrong but usually less serious
 and judgments are not justified by appeal to harm, justice, or rights
38

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition

These signature response patterns are
“nomological clusters” or
“homeostatic clusters”
– there is a strong (“lawlike”) tendency for the members of the cluster to occur together
39

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 (C1-ii) Response Patterns and Transgression Types :
Not only will criterion judgments cluster into two distinct response patterns, but each pattern is reliably evoked by a certain type of transgression
 (C1-ii)(a) transgressions involving harm , justice, or rights
( HJR ) evoke the signature moral pattern
 (C1-ii)(b) transgressions that do not involve harm , justice, or rights evoke the signature conventional pattern
40

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 (C1-iii) Universality:
 The regularities described in (C-1) and (C-2) are pancultural , and they emerge quite early in development
41

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition


The first set of conclusions generalize the results
I.e. they maintain that the results are specific instances of more general patterns
 (C2) The second conclusion maintains that the generalizations support conclusions about the nature (or definition) of morality
42

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 (C2) Moral Rules and Conventional Rules are
Natural Kinds
 The essential properties of the kind are those specified in
Turiel’s definitions

Moral rules
 have objective, prescriptive force ; they are not authority dependent *
 hold generally, not just locally *
 violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed , whose rights have been violated, or who has been participant to an injustice
 violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules
43


Tradition objective prescriptive force, be authority dependent, etc. (or judged to have them under ideal circumstances.
(C2) Moral Rules and Conventional Rules are
Natural Kinds
 careful about metaphysical distinctions that loom large in philosophy.)
Turiel’s definitions

Moral rules
 have objective, prescriptive force ; they are not authority dependent *
 hold generally, not just locally *
 violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed , whose rights have been violated, or who has been participant to an injustice
 violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules
44

Tradition essential properties of moral rules
 (C2)

Moral Rules and Conventional Rules are
Natural Kinds and types of transgressions.
The essential properties of the kind are those specified in
Turiel’s definitions

Moral rules
 have objective, prescriptive force ; they are not authority dependent *
 hold generally, not just locally *
 violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed , whose rights have been violated, or who has been participant to an injustice
 violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules
45

Tradition essential properties of moral rules
 (C2)

Moral Rules and Conventional Rules are
Natural Kinds and types of transgressions.
The essential properties of the kind are those specified in
Turiel’s definitions

Moral rules
 have objective, prescriptive force ; they are not authority dependent *
 hold generally, not just locally *
 violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed , whose rights have been violated, or who has been participant to an injustice
 violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules
46

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 The conclusion that Moral Rules are a Natural
Kind plausibly follows from the facts that
 They are a class of rules which exhibit a homeostatic cluster of properties
 There is an important nomological generalization about members of the class

Viz. all members of the class involve harm (or rights or justice)
47

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 An entirely parallel argument leads to the conclusion that
48

An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition
 It is not surprising that work in the M/C tradition has had a profound influence on many naturalistically inclined philosophers and also on many psychologists not trained in the Paiget-Kohlberg-
Turiel tradition
 The conclusion that Moral Rules and Conventional
Rules are Natural Kinds is profoundly important
 But, alas
49

The Theories Confront the Data
 Despite the wealth of evidence gathered by researchers in the M/C tradition, not everyone has been convinced of (C1) – the conclusions that generalize the results of M/C task experiments

50

The Theories Confront the Data
 (C1-ii) Response Patterns and Transgression Types :
Not only will criterion judgments cluster into two distinct response patterns, but each pattern is reliably evoked by a certain type of transgression
 (C1-ii)(a) transgressions involving harm , justice, or rights evoke the signature moral pattern
 (C1-ii)(b)
51

The Theories Confront the Data
 Dissenters maintain that there are many societies in which transgressions that do not involve harm (or justice or rights) [= non-HJR ] do not evoke the full conventional response pattern
 Rather, such transgressions evoke one or more of the signature moral responses
 There are a number of examples in the literature, but since time is limited I’ll mention only three
52

The Theories Confront the Data
 Nisan (1987), reports a series of studies on Israeli children that closely followed the methodology adopted by Turiel and his followers
 Kibbutz kids & urban secular kids gave the standard signature responses for both HJR & non-HJR rules
 Children in traditional Arab villages judged that ALL rules including clear examples of non-HJR rules (e.g. coed swimming, addressing a teacher by his first name) are

 authority independent generally applicable
These are central components of the signature moral response pattern
53

The Theories Confront the Data
 Jon Haidt (1993) used a famously colorful range of non-HJR transgressions
 eating the family dog
 cleaning the toilet bowl with the national flag
 f*cking a dead chicken
54

The Theories Confront the Data
 Jon Haidt (1993) used a famously colorful range of non-HJR transgressions
 eating the family dog
 cleaning the toilet bowl with the national flag
 f*cking a dead chicken
55

The Theories Confront the Data
 Jon Haidt (1993) used a famously colorful range of non-HJR transgressions
 eating the family dog
 cleaning the toilet bowl with the national flag
 f*cking a dead chicken
 Low SES participants in Brazil & the USA judged all of these nonHJR (“conventional”) transgressions to be
 authority independent
 generally applicable
These are central components of the signature moral response pattern
56

The Theories Confront the Data

(2002, 2004) studied reactions to another class of
rules, viz.
 He compared rules that prohibit disgusting behavior
 e.g. a dinner guest snorting and spitting into his glass of water, then taking a drink
 with rules that prohibit behavior that is not disgusting
 e.g. a dinner guest drinks tomato soup out of a bowl
57

The Theories Confront the Data
 With children , Nichols found the disgusting transgressions evoked three of the signature MORAL responses
 they were impermissible & more serious than
“conventional” transgressions
 they were NOT authority dependent
 they generalized to other groups
 The non-disgusting transgressions evoked the signature conventional responses
58

The Theories Confront the Data
 With adults , disgusting transgressions evoked two of the signature moral responses
 they were impermissible & more serious than
“conventional” transgressions
 they were NOT authority dependent
 but they did not generalize to other groups
 The non-disgusting transgressions again evoked the signature conventional responses
59

The Theories Confront the Data
 Nichols’ data add to the mounting evidence
 NonHRJ (“conventional” etiquette) transgressions often DO NOT evoke the signature conventional response pattern
60

The Theories Confront the Data
 Nichols’ results also pose a clear
 The putative nomological or homeostatic clusters posited in (C1-i) come apart in two different ways
61

The Theories Confront the Data
 Taken together, these findings pose a significant challenge to (C1-i), (C1-ii)(b) & (C1-iii)

I believe that the data we’ve reported are just the tip of the iceberg
 For a variety of reasons, m/c theorists have looked at only a narrow range of Non-HJR rules & transgressions

I’m betting that if one looked at a wider range of Non-
HJR violations in the appropriate communities, we’d find that (C1-ii)(b) would be massively disconfirmed
62

The Theories Confront the Data
 Some examples
 sibling incest
 for just about everyone
 homosexuality
 for the 50%+ of Americans who believe it is morally wrong
 taboo violation

 for people in traditional societies in which taboos are taken seriously e.g. reacting improperly to “polluting acts” – e.g. not being purified after being touched by a low caste person
63

Part II: An Overview of Research in the M/C
Tradition


But what about (C1-ii)(a)?
(C1-ii) Response Patterns and Transgression Types :
Not only will criterion judgments cluster into two distinct response patterns, but each pattern is reliably evoked by a certain type of transgression
 (C1-ii)(a)
 (C1-ii)(b) transgressions that do not involve harm , justice, or rights evoke the signature conventional pattern
64

The Theories Confront the Data
 We have found no studies reporting data that challenge the claim that transgressions involving harm, welfare, justice or rights evoke the signature moral response
 Possible explanation : (C1-ii)(a) is both true and pan-cultural , i.e. HJR rules reliably and cross-culturally evoke the signature moral response
 3 reasons to doubt that (C1-ii)(a) is true
65

The Theories Confront the Data
1. Even more so than with transgressions of Non-HJR rules, the range of HJR transgressions used in m/c task experiments has been remarkably narrow

All of the HJR transgressions studied have been
“schoolyard” transgressions such as hair pulling or pushing someone off of a swing
66

The Theories Confront the Data
James Blair has used such “schoolyard” transgressions when the participants were incarcerated psychopathic murderers!
67

The Theories Confront the Data
2. Philosophic views (Williams’ “relativism of distance” and Harman’s sophisticated moral relativism) suggest there may be many HJR rules that people do not
generalize to other cultures or historical periods

Slavery

Corporal punishment

Treating women as chattel
68

The Theories Confront the Data
3. Current public debate surrounding issues like the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay suggests that a significant number of people do not consider rules prohibiting harmful treatment in such cases to be authority independent
69

The Theories Confront the Data
 To explore the possibility that many harmful transgressions that are not of the schoolyard variety would not evoke the signature moral response pattern, Kelly, Stich, Haley, Eng & Fessler ran a web based experiment in which participants were asked about a number of such transgressions
70

The Theories Confront the Data
 For example, to explore whether rules prohibiting use of corporal punishment are judged to be authority independent , participants were presented with following pair of questions
71

It is against the law for teachers to spank students. Ms.
Williams is a third grade teacher, and she knows about the law prohibiting spanking. She has also received clear instructions from her Principal not to spank students. But when a boy in her class is very disruptive and repeatedly hits other children, she spanks him.
Is it OK for Ms. Williams to spank the boy?
YES NO
On a scale from 0 to 9, how would you rate Ms. Williams' behavior?
Not at all bad Very bad
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

(B) Now suppose that it was not against the law for teachers to spank students, and that Ms. Williams' Principal had told her that she could spank students who misbehave if she wanted to.
Is it OK for Ms. Williams to spank the boy?
YES NO
On a scale from 0 to 9, how would you rate Ms. Williams' behavior?
Not at all bad Very bad
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The Theories Confront the Data
 The results were quite dramatic
74

The Theories Confront the Data
 The results were quite dramatic
50
 8% of participants said it was OK to spank the boy in response to question (A) and 48% said it was OK to spank the boy in response to question (B)
40
30
20
10
0
OK to Spank?
Prohibited by
Authorities
NOT Prohibited p = 0.000 !
75

The Theories Confront the Data
 To explore whether actions that are judged to be wrong now also judged to be wrong in the past (= the Williams / Harman conjecture) participants were presented with the following pair of questions
76

Three hundred years ago, whipping was a common practice in most navies and on cargo ships. There were no laws against it, and almost everyone thought that whipping was an appropriate way to discipline sailors who disobeyed orders or were drunk on duty.
Mr. Williams was an officer on a cargo ship 300 years ago. One night, while at sea, he found a sailor drunk at a time when the sailor should have been on watch. After the sailor sobered up,
Williams punished the sailor by giving him 5 lashes with a whip.
Is it OK for Mr. Williams to whip the sailor?
YES NO
On a scale from 0 to 9, how would you rate Mr. Williams' behavior?
Not at all bad
0 1 2 3
Very bad
4 5 6 7 8 9

B) Mr. Adams is an officer on a large modern American cargo ship in 2004. One night, while at sea, he finds a sailor drunk at a time when the sailor should have been monitoring the radar screen. After the sailor sobers up, Adams punishes the sailor by giving him 5 lashes with a whip.
Is it OK for Mr. Adams to whip the sailor?
YES NO
On a scale from 0 to 9, how would you rate Mr. Adams’ behavior?
Not at all bad
0 1 2 3
Very bad
4 5 6 7 8 9

The Theories Confront the Data
 Again the results were dramatic – clearly confirming Williams’ claim about the relativism of distance
79

The Theories Confront the Data
 Again the results were dramatic – clearly confirming Williams’ claim about the relativism of distance
 52% of participants said that it was OK to whip a drunken sailor
300 years ago, but only 6% said it was
OK to do it today!
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
OK to Whip?
Today
300 Years Ago p = 0.000 !
80

The Theories Confront the Data
 Kelly et al. used one additional scenario to test whether actions judged to be wrong now are also judged to be wrong long ago or far away
 And five other scenarios to explore whether participants treat harm transgressions as authority independent
 In EACH case the data were similar
81

The Theories Confront the Data
 We maintain that these findings poses a serious challenge to (C1-ii)(a) , which claims that harm norms evoke the signature moral pattern
 When we go beyond the narrow range of schoolyard transgressions that have been used in previous studies, many participants think that rules prohibiting harmful actions are neither authority independent nor general in scope
82

The Theories Confront the Data

83

The Theories Confront the Data


(C1) The first set of conclusions generalize the results
I.e. they maintain that the results are specific instances of more general patterns
 (C2) The second conclusion maintains that the generalizations support conclusions about the
84

The Theories Confront the Data
 (C2) Moral Rules and Conventional Rules are
Natural Kinds
 The essential properties of the kind are those specified in
Turiel’s definitions

Moral rules
 have objective, prescriptive force ; they are not authority dependent*
 hold generally, not just locally*

 violations of moral rules are typically more serious than
85

Conclusion


86

Post-Script


87

Post-Script
 If the question is:
 The answer is:
88

Post-Script
 Research using the “moral / conventional task” gives us no reason to think the answer is YES … but
 In the next lecture, I’ll sketch a theory about the psychological mechanisms underlying NORMS which suggest that there is a natural kind in this vicinity … though
 whether
“moral rules” is an appropriate label for that kind depends (in part) on how the term “moral rule” is ordinarily used
89

Post-Script
 At present, very
about that
 However, Edouard Machery & I have an hypothesis
 We think that usage of the term is governed by both a
of rules AND a set of
90

Post-Script
 If we are right, then
, will use the term in a way that is significantly different from
 Observant Mormons
 Conservative Muslims
 Ultra-Orthodox Jews
91

Post-Script
 If our hypothesis is correct, then there is an important sense in which
 the term “moral rule” is multiply ambiguous
 there is no (single) concept of MORAL RULE
 the traditional project of providing a “definition of morality” which captures ordinary usage must be radically reconceived
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Post-Script
 Is our hypothesis correct?
 With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to offer you some data on my
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